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Meerkats work together to hunt, guard their homes, and raise their young; Earthwatch research helped explain the impacts of these behavior patterns and their significance to other species.

Professor Tim Clutton-Brock spent more than a decade studying meerkat society in the Kuruman River Reserve in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. The study focused on the evolution of cooperative behavior among these charismatic animals.

The meerkats in this study were accustomed to human beings, and as a result Earthwatch volunteers were able to walk with the groups as they foraged and run with them when they fought with neighboring groups, to accurately record data such as births, deaths, pregnancies, and changes in dominance status. Volunteers also documented group contributions made by individual members, such as babysitting, pup feeding, sentinel duty, and burrow renovation. Volunteers also worked with individual meerkats, which were trained to climb onto top-pan balances (using boiled egg crumbs) to be weighed three times a day.

The Kuruman River Reserve is home to the meerkats of the television show Meerkat Manor, and the series is filmed on site using one of Professor Clutton-Brock's habituated family groups. Part of the income from this has been used to improve the living conditions of families living on the reserve, including providing electricity and running water to every house and education to their children.

Lead scientists

Accommodation and food

Why the research is important

Why the research is important

Data collected by Earthwatch volunteers and resident researchers helped answer questions about the costs and benefits of group living.

This long-term project enabled researchers to explore the impact of cooperative breeding on animal populations.

Kalahari meerkats care for one another’s young, an unusual behavior called cooperative breeding. Researchers know little about the outcomes of cooperative breeding for species—they wonder, for example, if cooperative breeding makes it easier or more difficult for groups of animals to grow and thrive.

These researchers used meerkats as a model for investigating such questions. They recorded the growth, breeding success, and survival of all individuals in the 20 meerkat groups in the study area, and compared that information with daily records of precipitation and temperature and weekly records of plant cover and food availability. In addition, the group measured predation, the incidence of tuberculosis, rates of animals joining or leaving the study population, and the frequency of group establishment.

Meerkat appearing from burrow.

In addition to investigating the larger outcomes of cooperative breeding, the researchers explored the question of why animals like meerkats work together. Long-term data and specific individual data collected by Earthwatch volunteers and researchers helped to answer a number of questions on the costs and benefits of group living and to answer the question of why some animals live in cooperative groups.

About the research area

Kuruman River Reserve, South Africa, Africa

The project was based in the Kalahari region of South Africa, near the Botswana border. The Kalahari is called a desert, but in fact it’s a semiarid savanna covering 350,000 square miles (900,000 square kilometers) of southern Africa. It is home to many of Africa’s most iconic animals, including giraffes, baboons, leopards, and cheetahs.

Scattered across the region are dry river beds, acacia trees, and several extensive game reserves. The meerkat populations that were studied lived mainly in the Kuruman River Reserve, along with such animals as blue wildebeest, eland, and mongoose. The birds included social weavers and the world’s smallest bird of prey, the pygmy falcon.

Outside the reserve, where meerkats also live, are ranches owned by Afrikaans-speaking sheep and cattle ranchers. The closest village to the reserve is a small settlement that provides services to the farmers and their workers.

Earthwatch volunteers were broken into groups and partnered with project interns. Each group worked together to establish meerkat group composition (essentially, a sort of roll-call of meerkats in a particular group); take note of any signs of pregnancy, lactation, dominance interactions, aggressive encounters, etc.; and keep a sharp lookout for injuries or signs of disease (e.g., tuberculosis lumps).

The members of each team spent six full days helping to collect data on cooperative and foraging behavior, actually walking and running with groups of meerkats as they interacted throughout the day. They also spent two or three days monitoring the distribution of plants and animals. The volunteers also participated in outreach to the community and visited the local school. Whenever possible, volunteers were offered the opportunity to take part in projects such as ongoing habitat clearance.

During their recreational days, the volunteers took unguided walks within the reserve or socialized with other volunteers and staff. Other activities included a picnic on one of the big dunes in the reserve and excursions to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park and the Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve, which are home to an extraordinary range of wildlife, including lions, cheetahs, and leopards.

Accommodations and Food

Accommodations and Food

Camp consists of several simple buildings erected on a large clearing in Budongo Forest. You'll stay in a single room that contains a bed, beddings, mosquito net, reading desk and a chair. All rooms are connected to solar electricity. There are three pit latrines on site which are shared by all. You'll have access to a warm shower, every evening after a long day's work. Water used at camp is harvested off the roofs or taken from the Sonso River so frugal use is necessary.

Evening meals are prepared by cooks who will prepare dishes including rice, chapati, potatoes, spaghetti, beans, beef, fish, ground nuts (peanuts), cow peas, assorted fresh vegetables and fruits, eggs. There are other local foods such as cassava, stewed bananas (locally known as matooke) and maize bread (locally known as ugali or posho). Breakfast will be western style.

“Meerkat Manor”

Having watched Meerkat Manor on television I was so excited to have the chance to spend two weeks following the different Meerkat groups.

Home for the two weeks was an individual roundel hut with a bed and small sink. Although basic we were provided with a kettle to heat water for washing and a small fan heater which was much appreciated when getting dressed in the cold mornings! The coldest it dropped to was -4 degrees C but it soon warmed up.

On a couple of the mornings we did vegetation surveys but all other times we went out in teams of two volunteers with a researcher to follow and record the behavour of the Meerkats. They are weighed at the beginning and end of each day to determine how much food they were finding. One of our activities was to collect data on how successful their foraging was and record what they were catching and eating.

We had talks every evening from various researchers on the reserve after a delicious meal cooked for us by a local woman. The kitchen and store cupboard was available at all times so we were never hungry!

One evening we were taken for a night drive around the reserve and saw a wide variety of wildlife including porcupine, bat earred foxes and an ardvark as well as countless springbok, eland and wilderbeest.

One of my fondest memories is watching the Meerkats at the end of the day relaxing around their sleeping burrow. And then there's the Merrkat that stood on my head to get a good lookout position...what a great photo!